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Good morning. Salisbury Cathedral has just celebrated 800 years since the laying of its foundations. It’s in lockdown now of course, but in more normal times, this is one of our most loved and visited ancient buildings. It inspired John Constable’s famous painting which shows its 404 ft spire framed by a rainbow. The construction of the spire inspired a novel by William Golding exploring the ambitions of those who set out to build what at the time seemed impossible. The Spire also portrayed the cost of realising those ambitions, a cost that was not only financial but also physical and spiritual. They started building at a time when life was often cut short by poverty and sickness. Those who laid the foundations knew they would not see the cathedral complete in their lifetime. And those who worked on the spire faced physical dangers that would not be acceptable today. But they built for future generations, confident that others would rise up to worship and work in their place. What sustained them, along with their all too human ambitions and rivalries, was a sense of eternity. They envisaged the spire rising into the clouds, piercing heaven like prayer and pointing to what they believed was the overarching divine reality which keeps this world in being, moment to moment, generation to generation. For them community and belonging was not just here and now. It was solidarity with the dead and the unborn, past and future. The mass regularly offered in the cathedral gathered up their sacrifice in the sacrifice of the cross: Christ offered and risen for the salvation of the world. It was a pattern which mirrored experience: birth, death, suffering and hope. I think their spiritual certainty gave them a sense of continuity that we sometimes lack. The momentum of their faith came from the Bible and from history, and it led to a faith in the future which we, for all our technical wizardry seem to have lost. Who now would think of building a house of prayer to last eight hundred years? There’s been much speculation about our post-Covid world. Some want ‘normality’ to resume as soon as possible. Others dream of a purged world, with cleaner air and clearer seas and new restraints on human greed. My guess is that we shall emerge slowly and a little chastened, with some fresh ideas of how to work and communicate and travel, but otherwise much the same. But the nearness and suddenness of death that we are having to adjust to could make us question our perspective on life. Is it really all about us and our short-term fulfilment? Or does eternity in fact besiege us, calling us to discern the eternal afresh in every present moment.